Hospital environments can be holding spaces that may feel restrictive, cold, confining, clinical. Together with Hauser & Wirth, we explored how we can use art to reimagine a hospital as a space where you feel held, comforted, uplifted, and cared for.
Through our long-term partnership, we embarked on an innovative 3-year campaign to raise £1 million to bring hope and courage to people in mental health services across the UK.
The first two years of our partnership saw the Hauser & Wirth Savile Row Gallery transformed with the exhibitions, “Like there is hope and I can dream of another world” in 2022, and “Holding Space” in 2023. With the support of Bonhams, we held two fantastic auctions and together we raised £575,000, enabling us to bring art and creative activity to more people than ever.
In the summer of 2022, with the ambitious exhibition “Like there is hope and I can dream of another world” held at Hauser & Wirth, we featured major new installation-based artworks by long-term Hospital Rooms collaborators Mark Titchner, Harold Offeh and Michelle Williams Gamaker. We also played host to an investigative and collaborative arts programme that engaged wider artists and arts organisations, who joined us in imagining and designing a new future for mental health services and spaces.
Sutapa Biswas’ monumental mural, originally created for Springfield University Hospital and conceived with patients in the OCD clinic, wrapped the gallery space in a constellation of stars. Abbas Zahedi shared a magnetised sun created with and for patients in forensic services, containing a kinetic interactive poetry piece written by a group of people with lived experience of mental health services who met over the course of a year. Artists Alvin Kofi, Victoria Cantons, Valerie Asiimwe Amani, Giles Deacon, Richard Mark Rawlins and Katharine Lazenby used their experiences with Hospital Rooms to create a soft series of large-scale beds and cushions within the gallery, for visitors to lie on and gaze up towards a ceiling installation by Richard Wentworth. Sculptural works by Rachael Champion and illuminated sculptures by Jonathan Trayte could also be encountered throughout the space.
“As long-time supporters of Hospital Rooms, we have witnessed first-hand the extraordinary impact of their work in changing lives across NHS mental health inpatient units across the country. Embarking on our second year of a three-year partnership, I am thrilled to champion another programme of activities and fundraising that we know will help bring hope and courage, especially to young people in mental health services in the UK.”
– Neil Wenman, Hauser & Wirth
Building on this incredible success, in year three of our partnership we look ahead to launching an impactful exhibition that will be enhanced with public programming and strategic fundraising efforts, all culminating in an auction in the North Gallery – bringing with it more hope and more space for reimagining another world.
Stay tuned for news about our third year of partnership soon. For more information about Corporate Partnerships, please get in touch with Ania Patla, Head of Partnerships & Special Projects: ania@hospital-rooms.com
